Their Sunlit Room
by Francesca Wayland
Summary: A small drabble which takes in Perast, Montenegro place during The Great Hiatus.


**Their Sunlit Room**

When Sherlock awoke, the white sunshine of an Adriatic morning was filtering through the net curtains to wash soft light over everything in the bedroom. Outside gulls cried and sounds of the footsteps and conversations of passersby floated up from the street below, but within the four walls of the bedroom there was only silence. In his current life such moments of peace were rare, and he closed his eyes again to savour it.

The quiet of the morning belied the day that was to come. He had tracked an Ivan Božović, illegal arms dealer, to the man's holiday in Perast, and the time had come for Sherlock to enact his plan for taking him of the equation. He was rehearsing it in his mind, and going through the scenario one potential variable at a time, when a quiet murmur to his left broke him from his thoughts. He hit a mental pause button, freezing Božović in mid-stride during an ill-advised (and eventually thwarted) escape attempt, and turned onto his side.

He saw that The Woman was still asleep, but he didn't go back to his preparations. Instead he took the opportunity to study her unseen, to trace his eyes over the patterns of bright sunlight and velvety shadows that criss-crossed over her body.

She was the secret weapon of this operation, almost literally on both counts. Only the two people in their double bed knew that Irene Adler was still alive, and as in play as ever, and without the information she'd had on Božović's organisation and her advice on how to entrap him Sherlock would've been weeks away from a breakthrough, perhaps even months.

Some time into his quiet observation of her she gave another soft sigh, and this time her lashes fluttered open. Her gaze found his and in an instant it switched from drowsy to alert and deep—the fathomless blue of the water just beyond their door.

She didn't speak, she only held his eye contact for a moment and then gave him a languorous smile and stretched. The movement pulled his eyes downward like a magnet, and they swept over the tautened plane of her belly, the pronounced but soft curve of her breasts, the arch of her back…

He often told himself that his desire for The Woman was predicated on their exceptional compatibility of intellect and worldview, as well as the way she consistently surprised and impressed him. That his sexual attraction to her was secondary and had come later, and had grown out of his admiration and subsequent sentiment for her. But in moments such as this, when he could feel his breath shorten and his heart rate quicken just by glancing at her form (_clothed, _even), he knew that he was mistaken in that. The baser element of his attraction had been present from the start, and it had augmented his appreciation of her cerebral qualities just as much as they had increased her desirability to him.

She relaxed out of the stretch and drew up one knee, which she lazily canted towards him over their tangled sheets. This time his gaze was drawn to the supple, lean muscles of her leg and then her bare hip, and when he raised his eyes to her face again he found an expression that was playful and knowing.

He raised onto one elbow and leaned over her at the same time that she rose up from the mattress, and their mouths came together in a warm and slow kiss.

She slid an arm under his and wrapped it around his shoulder, and it was a pleasant anchor as their lips moved leisurely over one another's, communicating the sentiment _good morning_ in a far more expressive manner than words.

They broke apart with a series of soft, shorter kisses, and after they shared a small smile he dipped his head to press his lips against her throat and reached down to stroke his hand along the top of her thigh. It came to a rest on her knee, and he cupped his palm over it, brushing his fingertips across her skin.

Under his lips, he felt her give a subtle shiver, and he sensed his own body respond, so that the somewhat chaste and languid atmosphere of the room became more charged.

He straightened his back, then pulled his hand away until it hovered just above her knee and only the tips of his fingers grazed against her. This time he both saw and felt the current pass through her, and both his breath and hers grew heavier.

She watched his hand and he watched her, as he moved his arm down so that his fingers dragged across her thigh in a drawn-out, feather-light caress.

With avid interest he noted the way her lips parted and how colour began to bloom in her cheeks from the touch. Out of the corner of his eyes he also noticed her hand tighten almost imperceptibly on the sheets gathered around her waist, as well as the way her chest began to rise and fall under the thin silk of her pale peach negligee. He catalogued each sign of her escalating arousal and was filled with heady, dark gratification that he could incite such reactions in The Woman simply by skimming a finger along her bare skin. And even though her only touch on him was the light pressure of five fingernails against his shoulder blade, he could feel his own body beginning to grow receptive and sensitive, and crave much more stimulating contact.

She looked up from tracking his fingers' teasing path on her skin and their gazes locked, and the sensuality that had been simmering between them boiled over. His light touch became a groping hand around her thigh, and he used the grip to pull her against him as she wrapped her other arm around his shoulders and their mouths came together in a near-bruising collision.

There was nothing gentle in this kiss; it was combative and passionate, and neither of them held anything back. It said much more than 'good morning,' but just like that first kiss it expressed words that would go unspoken. It conveyed all of the complex and intense emotions that they felt for one another, and since the mission that had brought them together would soon end, there was also a note of desperation in the way their lips angled together and their tongues met. They didn't know when they would see each other again—and with the dangerous lives they both lead there was always the possibility that they would not.

Sherlock's last coherent thought was that Božović's takedown could be deferred for a short while. He knew that the man wasn't going anywhere; he could afford to give him several more hours of freedom—though Sherlock knew that he wouldn't make nearly as much use of those few hours as the man and woman here in their small sunlit room.


End file.
